170.000 Finnish war time photos released

The Finnish Defence Forces have just released 170.000 war time photos from 1939 to 1945 in the Internet. The photos cover the Winter War, the Continuation War and the Lapland War both at the front and at homes. All branches of the FDF are covered. Some of the pictures might be quite graphic.

Most of the photos were taken by the army photographers. It took 3,5 years to digitize the negatives.

Unfortunately the site is just now temporarily closed for changes, since it could not handle over 100.000 users at the same time. If you cannot go through please try again later.

http://www.sa-kuva.fi/

 

I'm going to have a look through these when the site's back up -- sounds like an impressive collection. Are these photos high-resolution? Its difficult to find good high-resolution collections (ie: full 'film rolls', not just a select few photos) online. The only two I know of off the top of my head are Fold3's USAAF collection and the Bundesarchiv collection on Wikimedia.

 

Fantastic stuff.
The 'agree' button for the English site doesn't appear to work, but the Finnish one got me in fine.
it is indeed jumping on/offline a bit, but when you do get a glimpse it's damned fine.

I think I may be sharing this - cheers, Karjala.

~A

 

Seems to be working fine now. And yes, some truly amazing photos there.

 

Amazing number of photos there. It will take a long time to see even a fraction of these.

 

The site seems to be working now - slowly. The photos appear to be fairly sharp.

 

Thanks for the thanks!

FYI: SA-kuva = Suomen Armeija -kuva = The Finnish Army -photo

 

Karj;
Great shots...
Thanks!
JeffinMNUSA

 

I came across this today. There's a lot of the 'highlights' from the massive Finnish archives collection (good for those who don't have several days to spare looking through the entire collection!):

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/05/finland-in-world-war-ii/100519/

 

Some great old photos to fiddle around with for a while-like about 75 years worth!
JeffinMNUSA

 

These are great! I can't wait to get to the reindeer shots!

 

I believe this one is from the Battle of Suomosallmi with COL Silasvuo on the left. The sky background is off a modern digital photo (the old technology could not capture both foregrounds and backgrounds so well).

 

Actually the photo was taken on 17th of February 1940 at Kollaa front (north of lake Laatokka (Ladoga) during the Winter War.

In the picture there are corporal Simo Häyhä (on the right) - probably the world's most lethal sniper of all times - and his division commander colonel Antero Svensson. Svensson presents Häyhä a rifle and a diploma, donated by "a Swede", for his great achievements.

You can search for more pictures by using e.g. words Häyhä, Svensson and Kollaa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
http://www.ww2incolor.com/finnish_forces/SimoHayha_ColonelSvensson_Kollaa_Feb17_1940.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kollaa

Small correction: that other famous battle was fought at Suomussalmi.

 

You can search for reindeer shots by using the word "poro", which is a reindeer in Finnish...

 

Karjala;
Thanks for the info! I found some reindeer shots and this is a lot of fun! I'm through about 30 experiments on the subject of the Winter War in the last few days and here is a subject to keep one's focus!
JeffinMNUSA

 

WInter War-and the Finns made an ingenius use of an ancient means of arctic transportation!

 

This is absolutely fantastic. I never thought so many images could exist for Finland. I will never have enough time to search through all of the photos, but if anyone finds an image, hopefully not too popular, of Simo Hayha, then please let me know. I am trying to gather a small collection of photos about him. I will be directing them to my blog.

- S.
http://ww2chronicles.blogspot.com

 

BUMP!

I know this is an old topic but I had to revive it because I think those pictures are marvelous. I have been reading about the Winter War lately and was searching for a Winter War topics and I found this gem.

Thank you very much for sharing those pictures with us Karjala.

 

keeps you busy for a year or two?